Hand-drawn animation, out of fashion in the computer age, experienced a rescue worthy of a fairy tale on Thursday, when Walt Disney animators announced they would bring back the art form to the big screen.

"We will be bringing back hand-drawn (two-dimensional) films," said Disney’s Ed Catmull, the President of Pixar and Disney Feature Animation.

I’ve always thought of Disney’s hand drawn as akin to a moving painting. If you’re going for realism, then technology greatly aids the animator. But if you’re going for a certain look, older methods may be the way to go.

Catmull and Lasseter gave the first descriptions on Thursday on how they reshaped story lines of Disney films already in production, canceled others and restructured how the Disney artists work.

"Pixar is still Pixar — nobody left," Catmull said. "At Disney, you have these remarkable artists there … they were not kneaded together in the right way. At the heart of it there has to be a director and the director has to have a vision."

They have said before that the story should drive the medium, and now with Disney’s recent deal with Zemeckis, I have to wonder if Aardman, recently parted from DreamWorks Animation, is far behind.